Westray returned to Cullerne by the evening train. It was near ten
o'clock, and he was finishing his supper, when someone tapped at the
door, and Miss Euphemia Joliffe came in.
"I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir," she said; "I am a little
anxious about Mr Sharnall. He was not in at teatime, and has not come
back since. I thought you might know perhaps where he was. It is years
since he has been out so late in the evening."
"I haven't the least idea where he is," Westray said rather testily, for
he was tired with a long day's work. "I suppose he has gone out
somewhere to supper."
"No one ever asks Mr Sharnall out. I do not think he can be gone out
to supper."
"Oh, well, I dare say he will turn up in due course; let me hear before
you go to bed if he has come back;" and he poured himself out another
cup of tea, for he was one of those thin-blooded and old-womanly men who
elevate the drinking of tea instead of other liquids into a special
merit. "He could not understand," he said, "why everybody did not drink
tea. It was so much more refreshing--one could work so much better
after drinking tea."
He turned to some calculations for the section of a tie-rod, with which
Sir George Farquhar had at last consented to strengthen the south side
of the tower, and did not notice how time passed till there came another
irritating tap, and his landlady reappeared.
"It is nearly twelve o'clock," she said, "and we have seen nothing of
Mr Sharnall. I am so alarmed! I am sure I am very sorry to trouble
you, Mr Westray, but my niece and I are so alarmed."
"I don't quite see what I am to do," Westray said, looking up. "Could
he have gone out with Lord Blandamer? Do you think Lord Blandamer could
have asked him to Fording?"
"Lord Blandamer was here this afternoon," Miss Joliffe answered, "but he
never saw Mr Sharnall, because Mr Sharnall was not at home."
"Oh, Lord Blandamer was here, was he?" asked Westray. "Did he leave no
message for me?"
"He asked if you were in, but he left no message for you. He drank a
cup of tea with us. I think he came in merely as a friendly visitor,"
Miss Joliffe said with some dignity. "I think he came in to drink a cup
of tea with me. I was unfortunately at the Dorcas meeting when he first
arrived, but on my return he drank tea with me."
"It is curious; he seems generally to come on Saturday afternoons," said
Westray. "Are you _always_ at the Dorcas meeting on Saturday
afternoons?"
"Yes," Miss Joliffe said, "I am always at the meeting on Saturday
afternoons."
There was a minute's pause--Westray and Miss Joliffe were both thinking.
"Well, well," Westray said, "I shall be working for some time yet, and
will _let_ Mr Sharnall in if he comes; but I suspect that he has been
invited to spend the night at Fording. Anyhow, you can go to bed with a
clear conscience, Miss Joliffe; you have waited up far beyond your usual
time."
So Miss Euphemia went to bed, and left Westray alone; and a few minutes
later the four quarter-chimes rang, and the tenor struck twelve, and
then the bells fell to playing a tune, as they did every three hours day
and night. Those who dwell near Saint Sepulchre's take no note of the
bells. The ear grows so accustomed to them, that quarter by quarter and
hour by hour strike unperceived. If strangers come to stop under the
shadow of the church the clangour disturbs their sleep for the first
night, and after that they, too, hear nothing. So Westray would sit
working late night by night, and could not say whether the bells had
rung or not. It was only when attention was too wide awake that he
heard them, but he heard them this night, and listened while they played
the sober melody of "Mount Ephraim." [See Appendix at end for tune.]
He got up, flung his window open, and looked out. The storm had passed;
the moon, which was within a few hours of the full, rode serenely in the
blue heaven with a long bank of dappled white cloud below, whose edge
shone with an amber iridescence. He looked over the clustered roofs and
chimneys of the town; the upward glow from the market-place showed that
the lamps were still burning, though he could not see them. Then, as
the glow lessened gradually and finally became extinct, he knew that the
lights were being put out because midnight was past. The moonlight
glittered on the roofs, which were still wet, and above all towered in
gigantic sable mass the centre tower of Saint Sepulchre's.
Westray felt a curious physical tension. He was excited, he could not
tell why; he knew that sleep would be impossible if he were to go to
bed. It _was_ an odd thing that Sharnall had not come home; Sharnall
_must_ have gone to Fording. He had spoken vaguely of an invitation to
Fording that he had received; but if he had gone there he must have
taken some things with him for the night, and he had not taken anything,
or Miss Euphemia would have said so. Stay, he would go down to
Sharnall's room and see if he could find any trace of his taking
luggage; perhaps he had left some message to explain his absence. He
lit a candle and went down, down the great well-staircase where the
stone steps echoed under his feet. A patch of bright moonshine fell on
the stairs from the skylight at the top, and a noise of someone moving
in the attics told him that Miss Joliffe was not yet asleep. There was
nothing in the organist's room to give any explanation of his absence.
The light of the candle was reflected on the front of the piano, and
Westray shuddered involuntarily as he remembered the conversation which
he had a few weeks before with this friend, and Mr Sharnall's strange
hallucinations as to the man that walked behind him with a hammer. He
looked into the bedroom with a momentary apprehension that his friend
might have been seized with illness, and be lying all this time
unconscious; but there was no one there--the bed was undisturbed. So he
went back to his own room upstairs, but the night had turned so chill
that he could no longer bear the open window. He stood with his hand
upon the sash looking out for a moment before he pulled it down, and
noticed how the centre tower dominated and prevailed over all the town.
It was impossible, surely, that this rock-like mass could be insecure;
how puny and insufficient to uphold such a tottering giant seemed the
tie-rods whose section he was working out. And then he thought of the
crack above the south transept arch that he had seen from the
organ-loft, and remembered how "Sharnall in D flat" had been interrupted
by the discovery. Why, Mr Sharnall might be in the church; perhaps he
had gone down to practise and been shut in. Perhaps his key had broken,
and he could not get out; he wondered that he had not thought of the
church before.
In a minute he had made up his mind to go to the minster. As resident
architect he possessed a master key which opened all the doors; he would
walk round, and see if he could find anything of the missing organist
before going to bed. He strode quickly through the deserted streets.
The lamps were all put out, for Cullerne economised gas at times of full
moon. There was nothing moving, his footsteps rang on the pavement, and
echoed from wall to wall. He took the short-cut by the wharves, and in
a few minutes came to the old Bonding-house.
The shadows hung like black velvet in the spaces between the brick
buttresses that shored up the wall towards the quay. He smiled to
himself as he thought of the organist's nervousness, of those strange
fancies as to someone lurking in the black hiding-holes, and as to
buildings being in some way connected with man's fate. Yet he knew that
his smile was assumed, for he felt all the while the oppression of the
loneliness, of the sadness of a half-ruined building, of the gurgling
mutter of the river, and instinctively quickened his pace. He was glad
when he had passed the spot, and again that night, as he looked back, he
saw the strange effect of light and darkness which produced the
impression of someone standing in the shadow of the last buttress space.
The illusion was so perfect that he thought he could make out the
figure of a man, in a long loose cape that napped in the wind.
He had passed the wrought-iron gates now--he was in the churchyard, and
it was then that he first became aware of a soft, low, droning, sound
which seemed to fill the air all about him. He stopped for a moment to
listen; what was it? Where was the noise? It grew more distinct as he
passed along the flagged stone path which led to the north door. Yes,
it certainly came from inside the church. What could it be? What could
anyone be doing in the church at this hour of night?
He was in the north porch now, and then he knew what it was. It was a
low note of the organ--a pedal-note; he was almost sure it was that very
pedal-point which the organist had explained to him with such pride.
The sound reassured him nothing had happened to Mr Sharnall--he was
practising in the church; it was only some mad freak of his to be
playing so late; he was practising that service "Sharnall in D flat."
He took out his key to unlock the wicket, and was surprised to find it
already open, because he knew that it was the organist's habit to lock
himself in. He passed into the great church. It was strange, there was
no sound of music; there was no one playing; there was only the
intolerably monotonous booming of a single pedal-note, with an
occasional muffled thud when the water-engine turned spasmodically to
replenish the emptying bellows.
"Sharnall!" he shouted--"Sharnall, what are you doing? Don't you know
how late it is?"
He paused, and thought at first that someone was answering him--he
thought that he heard people muttering in the choir; but it was only the
echo of his own voice, his own voice tossed from pillar to pillar and
arch to arch, till it faded into a wail of "Sharnall, Sharnall!" in the
lantern.
It was the first time that he had been in the church at night, and he
stood for a moment overcome with the mystery of the place, while he
gazed at the columns of the nave standing white in the moonlight like a
row of vast shrouded figures. He called again to Mr Sharnall, and
again received no answer, and then he made his way up the nave to the
little doorway that leads to the organ-loft stairs.
This door also was open, and he felt sure now that Mr Sharnall was not
in the organ-loft at all, for had he been he would certainly have locked
himself in. The pedal-note must be merely ciphering, or something,
perhaps a book, might have fallen upon it, and was holding it down. He
need not go up to the loft now; he would not go up. The throbbing of
the low note had on him the same unpleasant effect as on a previous
occasion. He tried to reassure himself, yet felt all the while a
growing premonition that something might be wrong, something might be
terribly wrong. The lateness of the hour, the isolation from all things
living, the spectral moonlight which made the darkness darker--this
combination of utter silence, with the distressing vibration of the
pedal-note, filled him with something akin to panic. It seemed to him
as if the place was full of phantoms, as if the monks of Saint
Sepulchre's were risen from under their gravestones, as if there were
other dire faces among them such as wait continually on deeds of evil.
He checked his alarm before it mastered him. Come what might, he would
go up to the organ-loft, and he plunged into the staircase that leads up
out of the nave.
It is a circular stair, twisted round a central pillar, of which mention
has already been made, and though short, is very dark even in bright
daylight. But at night the blackness is inky and impenetrable, and
Westray fumbled for an appreciable time before he had climbed
sufficiently far up to perceive the glimmer of moonlight at the top. He
stepped out at last into the loft, and saw that the organ seat was
empty. The great window at the end of the south transept shone full in
front of him; it seemed as if it must be day and not night--the light
from the window was so strong in comparison with the darkness which he
had left. There was a subdued shimmer in the tracery where the stained
glass gleamed diaphanous--amethyst and topaz, chrysoprase and jasper, a
dozen jewels as in the foundations of the city of God. And in the
midst, in the head of the centre light, shone out brighter than all,
with an inherent radiance of its own, the cognisance of the Blandamers,
the sea-green and silver of the nebuly coat.
Westray gave a step forward into the loft, and then his foot struck
against something, and he nearly fell. It was something soft and
yielding that he had struck, something of which the mere touch filled
him with horrible surmise. He bent down to see what it was, and a white
object met his eyes. It was the white face of a man turned up towards
the vaulting; he had stumbled over the body of Mr Sharnall, who lay on
the floor with the back of his head on the pedal-note. Westray had bent
low down, and he looked full in the eyes of the organist, but they were
fixed and glazing.
The moonlight that shone on the dead face seemed to fall on it through
that brighter spot in the head of the middle light; it was as if the
nebuly coat had blighted the very life out of the man who lay so still
upon the floor.